This invention relates to a device for opening and closing an openable panel provided in a passenger""s compartment for operation or display.
In recent years, it has been studied to store a disk or the like behind a panel for operation or display and take it in and out when the panel is opened and further to turn the panel inside out by constructing the panel to open and close in an audio equipment or navigation equipment installed in a vehicle.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-190786 discloses a device constructed as follows. This device is provided with a first lever and a second lever which are rotatable independently of each other. One vertical end of an openable panel is rotatably coupled to the second lever, and a gear is so provided between a pinion mounted on a rotatable shaft of the second lever and a gear formed on the first lever as to mesh with the pinion and the gear. By the mutually independent rotations of the respective levers, an operation of elevating one vertical end of the openable panel and an operation of relatively rotating the openable panel with respect to the first lever are performed in parallel. The openable panel is turned inside out by the combination of the above two operations, thereby preventing a theft.
In the device disclosed in the above publication, in order to cause the first and second levers to move relative to each other at predetermined timings, quite a few number of gears have to be arranged and an irregularly shaped gear plate has to be provided in addition to the two levers. Further, the gear has to be formed on the outer circumferential surface of the first lever. Accordingly, an operation of assembling the above device is very cumbersome and costly. Further, since the number of the gears is large, the panel largely shakes due to a total sum of backlashes and a maloperation is likely to occur.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a panel driving device which is free from the problems residing in the prior art.
According to an aspect of the invention, a panel driving device is adapted for rotating an openable panel by 180xc2x0 about a horizontal axis with the vertical end thereof as a point of support and turning the openable panel inside out by moving the point of support of the openable panel toward the opposite vertical side during the specific period while the openable panel is rotated. The panel driving device comprises: a supporting member; a rotary arm rotatably supported on the supporting member about a transverse axis, the rotary arm having a rotatable end rotatably coupled to a vertical end of a side of an openable panel; a rotating mechanism for relatively rotating the openable panel with respect to the rotary arms; and a torque converting mechanism for converting part of a driving force of the rotating mechanism into a rotating force for rotating the rotary arms only during a specific period to rotate the rotary arms upward and downward.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent upon a reading of the following detailed description and accompanying drawings.